The inside of the body pushes towards the outside And I push myself through streets full of men Cafes full of men. I order a coffee from a man Men push through the street in front of the cafes Bargain in black eyes My life overflowing its bounds I can't buy food, negotiate the streets or bargain in this life There are men everywhere the magnificent saber of Islam in their eyes Men terrify me Beauty terrifies me Beautiful men terrify me and I would faint in the Barbes mud the inside of my body pushing towards the outside I sit in a cafe in Barbes and a woman walks by in tears The God of Islam is the God of Love and I know that love is a terrible thing and a god of love will finish my life Love is the steepest bargain of terrible price. The heart pushes towards the outside the heart is a souk one civilization dents another pushing towards the outside and I would pass out in the market-place men everywhere My life not such important merchandise The inside pushes me further out I would die here without murder or suicide Barbes or Essaouira full of men The God of Islam, eighteen years old. 100 francs a God with a revolver
Barbes Dec 4, 1981 ______________________ Rene Ricard God With Revolver Hanuman Books 1989
What flitted back across the hills yesternight, without a sound I thought was a long buried matter of the heart from the deepest recesses of a valley wallowing in death With my own eyes I saw her open a little doorway onto the garden tentatively venture forth, look here, there, then promptly disappear, leaving, in the end, still the very heart of winter, nothing but traces
1996 translated by Steve Bradbury ____________________________ Yang Mu Hawk of the Mind Columbia, 2018
Outside, nothing moves: only the rain nailing the house up like a coffin. Remember, in childhood, when it rained? Then, the whole world sailed down the alley: leaves, paper, old shoes, the buildings, everything like a circus going to sea. Now, the rain, the iron rain, with its little keys is closing all the doors. . . and I think we're all dead. See how the sky sits like a tombstone on the roofs.
Evening on the Farm
Time for a jacket now, and to put my hands away. I must learn from the stars how a field should look. But one by one, bright children, the stars rush downstairs to meet my horses and hay with their astonished eyes.
Apprentice
Because I love you I've learned to be this hammer that runs all day like a horse with its hoof in its head. In the afternoon my hands lie down together for a minute.
Twilight at the Shop
A whole day at the saw — when they come for the rubbish, I throw myself out with the dust. We smile and smoke and praise what's left of the sun. Dark trees have bottled its light. They glow like many beers.
Night-Letter Nightly I write you letters but morning is always a cancelled gray envelope stamped ADDRESS UNKNOWN. I've been wanting to tell you how things are since you have gone: the cherry trees still looks into your window and offers its arms full of small birds of your last Spring. I've packed your luggage — that worn leather suitcase with the labels of epochs and sent it on freedom rides to Mississippi jails. Your clothes closet, once gay as a carnival of bears with your checkered shirts and poet's neckties holds the odor of dead flowers and more sinister than shadows motes of dust in faded sunbeams swing suspended from bare wire hangers. Your rough jackets have gone with their bearings — they have given me their last embraces to link arms with new companions and your shoes are out walking again on new picket lines. But the grief of your old eyeglasses that you patched with Scotch tape is more than I can bear. Lying in the lamplight before an open book they watch me from a void of vacant lenses as I go from room to room on perilous journeys groping with my fingers to construct your face, seeking the answer of your lips upon the sundered air the way it was the last time I kissed you under the wings of the Angel of Death. ___________________ Olga Cabral The Evaporated Man Olivant, 1968
Olga was a very early friend to Longhouse — we miss her.
A poem (or more) will be offered by the hour or with the day and at the very least once a week. So stay on your webbed toes. The aim is to share good hearty-to-eat poetry. This is a birdhouse size file from the larger Longhouse which has been publishing from backwoods Vermont since 1971 books, hundreds of foldout booklets, postcards, sheafs, CD, landscape art, street readings, web publication, and notes left for the milkman. Established by Bob & Susan Arnold for your pleasure. The poems, essays, films & photographs on this site are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the author's go-ahead.
New from Bob Arnold ~ "Faraway Like The Deer's Eye" ~ Bob Arnold Faraway Like the Deer’s Eye — A Saga — FOUR BOOKS IN ONE VOLUME ~ A Poet’s Memoir // 50 Years of Longhouse & Poets // A Builder’s Life, with photo assembly // The Selected Poems of Bob Arnold // An afterword by Andrew Schelling
Longhouse Bibliography Quick Link —
Link to the Birdhouse Bibliography
Read about Longhouse (a press edited by Bob Arnold) ~
"Poets Who Sleep" by Bob Arnold, Longhouse 2019. Please link on image for ordering information.
Link to a Preview of Poets Who Sleep
Shared at "Dispatches from the Poetry Wars"
Heaven Lake by Bob Arnold
Available from Longhouse. Please link on the image for ordering information.
The Woodcutter Talks by Bob Arnold
Available from Longhouse. Please link on the image for ordering information. Drawing from years of poetry and also new poems, The Woodcutter Talks is Bob Arnold at his finest branching love poems with back country work poems and settlement with community, family and individual portraits. The extensive collection also showcases vintage photographs from woodcutters and woodchoppers and big-saw-pullers of old. Sweat runs down the cheeks of the mere literary and they adore one another.
Stone Hut by Bob Arnold
"Once again, my friends, this is your best book! Exquisite in design, fat enough to be a feast, pretty enough to just wade around in, but deep enough to dive into and stay with, all I can say is WOW, you guys really did it – it’s the first of its kind, a scrapbook novel that is also a how-to and a mystery -- how did he do it, and how does he make rocks balance like Thor? — Gerald Hausman" ~
Museum, An Unlikely Meditation, written by the poet Bob Arnold, is as much an unlikely novel. Visit this page for details.
Cid Corman's Of, Volumes 4 & 5 from Longhouse.
ANNOUNCING. The final volumes to Corman's opus in one book ~ of, volumes 4 & by Cid Corman. 1500 poems, 850 pages edited by Bob Arnold, now available in a limited edition from Longhouse, 2015. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information ~
'Fully a book ~
An interview with Bob Arnold on Cid Corman’s ‘of’
Janina by Janine Pommy Vega
New and available now from Longhouse ~ Janine Pommy Vega Janina Visions, Tales & Lovesongs 288 pages perfect bound packed with poems and photographs. Janine's full course album of photographs, travel journals, poems, facsimile notebooks of poems, childhood photographs, and family, Beat family, plus her unfinished memoir of Jerusalem.
Walking Woman with the Tambourine is the final book of poems by Janine Pommy Vega.
"Walking Woman with the Tambourine is the final book of poems by Janine Pommy Vega. The author completed the manuscript and left it as she wished with her executor Bob Arnold … New and available now from Longhouse ~ Poetry. 144 pages. Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the image for ordering information
New! James Koller : Selected Poems 2003-2004-2005
James Koller — Selected Poems 2003-2004-2005 Longhouse 2016, 72 pages, perfect bound. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
OPENINGS by JAMES KOLLER
Selected poems 1959 ~ 1985 edited by Bob Arnold. New and available now from Longhouse ~ 72 pages . Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
Lorine Niedecker's A Cooking Book
A Cooking Book Lorine Niedecker Longhouse 2015 72 pages, perfect bound. Please link on the image to purchase this new title from Longhouse.
Kent Johnson's "I Once Met"
Available once again now in 2022! $25 plus shippingVisit the Birdhouse for Kent's book information :
JD Whitney's Selected Poems
J.D. Whitney ~Sweeping the Broom Shorter Selected Poems 1964-2014 from ~ Longhouse 2014. 192 pages. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
New! from Longhouse ~ Island Dreams by Gerald Hausman Please link for details & Paypal payment
ISLAND DREAMS by GERALD HAUSMAN Selected Poems 1968 ~ 2015 chosen & edited by Bob Arnold New and available now from Longhouse ~ 160 pages Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
John Bradley's "And Thereby Everything"
L O N G H O U S E is very proud to announce a new book by John Bradley in their on going series of S C O U T book publications — other titles from the series have been by Kent Johnson, Janine Pommy Vega, James Koller, Bob Arnold and Lorine Niedecker with more in the works. An opening salvo at the front of the book by Patrick Lawler should provide ample cover for what the reader should come to expect. And Thereby Everything John Bradley Longhouse 2015 First edition only issued in softcover 208 pages, perfect bound illustrated throughout by Bob Arnold with 150 photographs
Dudley Laufman : Bull & More Bull
Visit this page for information on this new Longhouse by Dudley Kaufman (2016)
Dudley Laufman's Islandian Poems
The Islandian Poems & Fables Dudley Laufman Longhouse 2015. 72 pages, perfect bound. Please link on the image to purchase this new title from Longhouse.
MIRZA ABD AL-QADER BIDEL / ROBIN MAGOWAN ~
New from Longhouse. Please click on the image
New from Longouse ~ Robin Magowan
New from Longhouse. Robin Magowan. The Garden of Amazement, Scattered Gems After Sâeb. large softcover glossy bound with an introduction by the translator, 112 pages
Duo by Bob Arnold — New from Longhouse Please link to A Longhouse Birdhouse for more information
DUO Bird Poems by BOB ARNOLD. New and available now from Longhouse ~ 92 pages. Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse
Start With The Tree by Bob Arnold
New in 2015. Building a marriage, building a family, building a small barn out in the woodlands together as a family, as a marriage, and seeing the roof go on. Over 150 color photographs
Beautiful Days by Bob Arnold
Beautiful Days ~ new poems of living and working in the Vermont woodlands and to Hurricane Irene
Yokel by Bob Arnold
[from "Yokel, A Long Green Mountain Poem" by Bob Arnold] ~ that and more at Bob Arnold webpage of books & poems: Please link on this image for more
Go West by Bob Arnold
Filled with poems and travel photography — shares one cross-country trip the couple took in the mid-1980s to California from Vermont.
"I'm In Love With You Who Is In Love With Me" by Bob Arnold
from Bob Arnold's new book "I'm In Love With You Who Is In Love With Me" ~~~~~~~40 years of love poems
"Rain Bear" by Bob Arnold
Bob Arnold's first children's book "Rain Bear" New and available now from Longhouse ~ 50 pages. Perfect bound softcover with photographs ~ & drawings by Jason Clark
"Heretic" by John Phillips from Longhouse
New from Longhouse ~ John Phillips "Heretic". Poems with collages by the author. Click on the image for more ~
Kim Dorman — "Owner"
"Owner" by Kim Dorman. Including photographs by Kim Dorman. Selected and edited by Bob Arnold. New and available now from Longhouse 2016 ~ 80 pages. Perfect bound softcover